Should Rushing in Diablo 3 be Banned or Limited?

Normal, NM, Hell goes by in one hour or less. I think it is broken. People shouldn’t get boosted. + in Loot 2.0 there will be like lvl 20 IK sets, but who would enjoy and who would by happy finding it? You cut half of fun letting people to get boosted.

Suggestions:

1. Make boosting not possible.

2. Add some dropable items in Normal, NM, Hell which could be used for everyone and would have price. Some kind of currency. In other words, make normal, NM, hell worth playing without constant thoughts that normal, nm and hell is a time waste.

3. Make the whole leveling through lower difficulties journey more logical. Cuz now, if you decide to go only on MP 10, self found, you have so much exp, that you overgrow the content early and literaly nothing can drop for you what u can use. That’s just silly.

Takralus: Your definition of fun might not be the same as someone else’s. People enjoy playing in different ways. Some, like me, are content to pootle through the Acts on their way up to Inferno at their own speed, others (who maybe already have several level 60 characters) prefer to get to there as soon as possible by enlisting the help of a mate or two. Taking away that possibility would hurt those who prefer that play style, and prevent friends who have characters at different levels from playing together.

Rushing is very easy to do in D3, whether solo or with the aid of friends. Though some changes have been made since launch to limit shared exp gain from repeating the same area, the developers clearly meant to allow rushing. (There are Blue quotes proving that on the DiabloWiki.net Rushing article.) The devs could have put Clvl reqs on gems, or made it impossible to join a game at a quest further than your character has progressed, or put bigger limits on shared exp or exp gain from monsters well above your Clvl, etc. They didn’t since they knew Rushing was popular with many players, in an (admirable?) display of letting players play the game as they wish.

I generally twink and rush my characters, and have helped friends rush theirs (it requires some care to do it in Hardcore without killing off the little one), but I’m open to arguments that this is wrong or cheesy, even given my justified Fear of the Fifties. I like the OP’s idea that players could gain some sort of bonus or find valuable items in Normal/NM/Hell to encourage playing through, rather than just flashing to level 60 ASAP. (The high selling price of normal Mats in Hardcore does that a little bit, but only in relative terms, and currently there’s zero profit in playing through NM/Hell.)

Any “encourage play through instead of Rush past” ideas like those offered by the OP? Do you yearn for rushing or twinking limits if/when we get an Ironborn mode or Ladder resets? Or do you take the other extreme and demand an “instant level 60” button to put an end to the entire dreary pre-Inferno existence?

24 thoughts on “Should Rushing in Diablo 3 be Banned or Limited?”

This is walking by a basketball court and telling someone that he’s not allowed to play 1-on-1 or horse, because that isn’t “real” basketball. Why? I like 1-on-1. I like horse. They’re fun games.

If you prefer to play 5-on-5 according to the “official” rules of basketball (whose “official” rules? The NCAA? The NBA? …), fine. Do so. But why should I have to play that way just because you want to?

If you don’t want to rush your character, why should Blizzard make it impossible for me to rush mine? If you don’t want to rush your character, just don’t rush it. There, problem solved. Next issue …

I would love to see some bonuses, benefits, prizes…anything really…that makes the 1-60 game more enjoyable in some way. I tend to enjoy the leveling process in most games I play, I restart characters constantly to play through it. Progression through the game is fun, at least to me, versus sitting at end game and just picking up +3% gold/magic find every hour or so. The problem of course is that this game offers absolutely nothing except endgame content. Would love if they could somehow make leveling more fun, I don’t like rushing but right now it almost feels like a requirement because all the good features are only available at either level 60 (like NV) or in Inferno (like monster density).

I’d like to agree, but Blizz for some reason stripped all character building RPG elements from the game, and left us with nothing but a brutally hom-ogenized (- to beat the ridiculous censoring filter. I like grape juice) item system.

All gear at lower levels is the same as end game, just with single digit values. There’s no reason to use it in the following Act, nevermind next difficulty. Hopefully this is addressed in Loot 2.0, but they still lack any reason to create more than one of each class.

I tried to RP a little by making a DH that went the entire way from 1-60 going sword and board (since for some reason DHs can’t use a 2H sword… again, limiting my ability to RP. Why can’t my barb hit things with a staff? I miss the Ribcracker), but once I got to Inferno there was no reason to continue playing him, he was the exact same naked as my main DH naked.

We all rushed like mad in D2 also, but the existence of quality low and mid level Uniques provided at least some rewards for playing through. That could be easily implemented in D3; 1) they’d need to improve low level legendaries, and 2) greatly boost the odds of the first quest boss drops popping legendaries, rather than just rares.

In d2 you would atleast find some loot on your way to hell. Loot that was actually usable even at end game. I got my first soj from diablo in act 4 in normal mode. And it was just one of the useful items i found while leveling.

I think leveling as a paradigm is going to die in the next 10-15 years. W/ monster power, they can dump Normal/NM/Hell altogether. They’d just have to tie item levels to monster power at that point. Oh, and bound gear to prevent the already annoying problem of total gear saturation. There are lots of other ways to make a new time sink (collecting keys, demonic essences are a decent start) than leveling. Skills and runes could be handed out for actual achievements (like killing Diablo, completing the Crumbling Vault, etc) or could come from crafting w/ bound items. The leveling grind is old and moldy. I think we’re ready for something different.

The only thing I would change is to make it impossible to skip quests by joining a game that’s farther in progress than you are. It should be impossible for you to join a game that is on a quest you haven’t reached yet.

Other than that, rush away, I don’t care at all. That’s not how I play but I don’t care if that’s how you play.

If the lower levels had some appeal people would play through them sometimes, at least at first. They don’t, so people don’t. Of course there’s no reason to have more than one of each class on sc and hc people are eager to just get back to where they were but when you make a game that starts at 60… people will skip to the starting line.

Level 20 ik sets won’t change that, not unless they go and make them a lot better than that level 31 calamity.

I don’t exactly hate rushing so much as I hate the mentality behind rushing. That said, I do think that so many people *wanting* to rush (in both D2 & D3) is a clear sign of weaknesses in the game design.

The only problem I had with the above statement (while disagreeing that rushing is a problem) was the claim that level 20 IK sets will ruin the game. Who’s going to collect a whole IK set before hitting 60? You’d have to buy it, and even then you might buy 1 piece now and the rest later. A level 20 IK item isn’t going to be good at level 40, and I assume it won’t level up with you. So basically, if someone wants to buy a full IK set for level 20, they’re going to be out a chunk of gold and replace it by 40 anyway. Seems more efficient to just wear the Cain’s set and level faster. Pre-hell content is super easy anyway.

My personal pet hate is that they make rushing so easy in some ways and yet put in other restrictions against rushing that impact on legitimate game play. I don’t rush, I like to play the game through properly but I always end up level 28 at the end of Normal and level 48 at the end of Nightmare and 58 at the end of Hell. And then I’m not allowed to progress to the next difficulty, I have to run through Act3 a couple more times before I unlock the next difficulty level.

I think Diablo 3 endgame should not be all about level 60. Leveling from 1-60 should be an integrated part of the game. D2 was like that in in a way, because a great source of runes was hellforge rushing, and a lot of people chose to do that by leveling new chars from level 1.

Right now there is no incentive to level from 1-60 once you have your chars set up, which is wrong, imo.

My suggestion was to have a special uber quest available at level 60 that allows players to risk all their gear. If they defeat the uber quest, they get to pick from a wide selection of special skills, spells, items and abilities but they also get reset to level 1. This would mean the journey doesn’t end at level 60. It means the journey is to level up to 60 multiple times to accumulate those special rewards to make yourself OP.

But, sure, I’m not against rushing. But it IS pointless if there’s no reason for veterans to level from 1-60.

leveling up in d3 is awful. 1-60 is wasted time, items are shit, there’s no investment into your build or attachment. Why anyone would want to punish someone else for trying to get out of the cesspool that is 1-60 is just inhumane. It must be that mentality of “share my pain” because the person that doesn’t want rushing is a genuine piece of shit that just wants others to suffer

I really think this whole argument is a moot point… people who decide to play ironborn, self-found, whatever you want to call it, can simply choose to do so already. I don’t want the wants of the few to become a standard for the many.

That being said, I would personally enjoy playing ironborn more if I were simply a luckier person. I played diablo 2 for several years, and never once found for myself a single high rune, let alone a full runeword PLUS the requisite socketed item. I’m sure this issue will be dealt with in the upcoming itemization alterations, but I honestly don’t know how bad it is for diablo 3 right now. My internet isn’t strong enough to play diablo 3, so I never bought it for PC, and i just about crapped myself when I heard that it was coming out for xbox 360.